Not many Haven clubs involve one-on-one cat time. 

Cat Rescue Club is a student-led effort to rescue stray or wild cats in the community, foster them through student homes, and increase their chances for adoption. The club-for-a-cause involves dedicated hours by the club’s leaders to ensure the cats are funded and well cared for. 

The club’s president, senior Ted Dudley, founded the club in fall 2024. He was inspired by his six years of experience in cat rescuing and a desire to bring the service to other high schoolers.

The club follows a systematic approach involving the division of club duties to different leaders, club members, and outside organizations. Dudley serves as the main cat rescuer and the coordinator of fostering.  

“What I do is organize different rescues and coordinate different fosters and run different partnerships with different cat rescue organizations,” Dudley said. “We partner with different shelters, such as Forgotten Cats, and we partnered with the SPCA Nether Providence.”

After the cats are rescued, club leaders help notify students of the new cat arrivals and coordinate matches, which typically happen through social media. 

“Every time there’s a new kitten or a cat, we send a message on the group that if anyone is interested in fostering, we notify [about] the traits and how the cat is, how old,” fundraising coordinator Kavya Bhola said. 

Dudley finds that opening up fostering to high school students has been a huge bonus for the adoption process.

“Instead of [the cats] staying in shelters, they’re able to stay with individual students from our school, which is really awesome because it’s a nicer home,” Dudley said. “Oftentimes, those students end up adopting the cats themselves.”

When club leaders are not out rescuing cats or coordinating fostering for club members, they follow a different meeting format than most Haven clubs. 

“It’s more outside of school,” Bhola said. “We browse our plans in the group chat, and then if we feel like we need to have a meeting fifth block, we do that. We prefer being online more than in person.”

Community Outreach Manager and freshman Elizabeth Gebhardt asserts that this aspect makes the club even more enjoyable. 

“We have our little group chat, and everybody’s always coming up with new ideas to fundraise,” Gebhardt said. “We have a lot of fun planning new things and seeing everybody’s cats in our group chat.” 

Another aspect of the club is raising money for the cats. This fundraising goes towards rescuing, paying for adoptions, and other club-related responsibilities, and typically involves a monthly bake sale.

With leaders monitoring rescues and the adoption process, club members are mostly just responsible for helping fundraise and completing other volunteer tasks. Members can gain community service hours for both fostering the cats and helping make cat-related necessities.

“Anybody can join, and I mean, other than coming to bake sales, it’s not that high of commitment,” club vice president Tilly Gebhardt said. 

Although Dudley is graduating this year, he plans to maintain his connections with the club to ensure a smooth transition for the 2026-2027 school year. 

He is proud of how far the club has come during his time at Haven, and looks forward to passing the torch to the next group of Cat Rescue Club leaders. 

“They’re really the best people you could really want for any kind of club, specifically this one that’s so much about care and compassion and helping other animals,” Dudley said. *